The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive? by Peter Ward

The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive?



Download The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive?




The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive? Peter Ward
Language: English
Page: 205
Format: pdf
ISBN: 0691130752, 9780691130750
Publisher: Princeton University Press

From Publishers Weekly

Author and Earth Sciences professor Ward (of the Univ. of Wash.) has authored numerous books for non-specialists (Under a Green Sky, Rare Earth); this latest is a critical response to James Lovelock's Gaia concept, which argues that homeostatic physical and chemical interactions work to maintain Earth's habitability. Ward argues, passionately, that the opposite is true-that living organisms decrease Earth's habitability, hastening its end by perhaps a billion years. His conclusion, more political than scientific, is that humans must engineer the environment to sustain life. Ward provides examples of the food chain in failure, which results in an imbalanced environment and, ultimately, mass extinctions. Unfortunately, Ward's arguments (and some of his facts) are flawed; many examples focus on short periods of time, ignoring "first causes" that usually include a natural but temporally and/or geologically distant event (massive volcanic eruptions, ocean impacts, etc.). Moreover, ecological balance was indeed restored over the course of thousands or millions of years, as new organisms evolve to fill the ecological niche left by extinct species. Ward's criticisms have merit, but his Medea hypothesis is only valid on an evolutionarily insignificant scale; the reality is probably some combination of the Gaia and Medea approaches. Unfortunately, Ward doesn't help his case with misanthropic sentiment and occasionally garbled syntax. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

Ward holds the Gaia Hypothesis, and the thinking behind it, responsible for encouraging a set of fairy-tale assumptions about the earth, and he'd like his new book, due out this spring, to help puncture them. He hopes not only to shake the philosophical underpinnings of environmentalism, but to reshape our understanding of our relationship with nature, and of life's ultimate sustainability on this planet and beyond. -- Drake Bennett, Boston GlobeAuthor and Earth Sciences professor Ward has authored numerous books for non-specialists; this latest is a critical response to James Lovelock's Gaia concept, which argues that homeostatic physical and chemical interactions work to maintain Earth's habitability. Ward argue, passionately, that the opposite is true--that living organisms decrease Earth's habitability, hastening its end by perhaps a billion years. -- PublishersWeekly.comThe point of The Medea Hypothesis is that life, rather than helping to regulate the Earth 'System' by negative feedbacks, does all it can to consume the resources available--sowing the seeds of its own extinction. -- Dr. Henry Gee, BBC Focus MagazineWhen avid science readers browse the shelves for new titles, the books that grab their attention are best described by a single adjective: thought-provoking. And no scientist/author is more provocative in his approach and innovative in his thinking than University of Washington astrobiologist Peter Ward . . . . [R]eaders looking for solace will not find it in Ward's latest effort, The Medea Hypothesis. This time Ward goes after motherhood itself--or at least the central idea of the Gaia ('good mother') hypothesis that has evolved to describe the relationship between life and the planet as a whole. -- Fred Bortz, Seattle Times[Ward] makes his points succinctly and supports them well. -- Rebecca Wigood, Vancouver Sun[The Medea Hypothesis] is an interesting intellectual exercise on the history of life. -- ChoiceReading the book will widen your field of vision about life on earth, which is still there after about 4 billion years. -- Dr. Hein van Bohemen, Ecological EngineeringWard . . . adopts the tone of a planetary mortician gruesomely interested in his subject's decease. Ward is an expert on mass extinctions, and the subject seems to have infected his general outlook. He does not come across a happy camper. -- Roger Gathman, Austin American-StatesmanThe Medea Hypothesis is a valuable and well-needed challenge to the hegemony of Gaian thought, and this is a very clearly presented and thought provoking book. . . . Ward's book is a crucial step in opening this debate and I would certainly recommend reading it, but with a critical eye open for chinks in the argument. -- Lewis Dartnell, Astrobiology Society of Britain

MORE EBOOKS:
Download ebook: The Lost German Slave Girl: The Extraordinary True Story of Sally Miller and Her Fight for Freedom in Old New Orleans
Branching Programs and Binary Decision Diagrams: Theory and Applications read







Tags: The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive? ebook pdf djvu epub
The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive? download pdf epub djvu
Download The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive? free ebook pdf
Read The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive? online book
The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive? cheap ebook for kindle and nook
The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive? download book
Peter Ward ebooks
The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive? download pdf rapidshare mediafire fileserve 4shared torrent